We're a Paleo household! I love, love, love it. Meals are more satisfying and it's nearly impossible to gain weight if you're doing it right.

Do you have cookbooks? I've found the Primal Blueprint cookbook to be my favorite. There's a new one called "Everyday Paleo" that looks pretty good too (if you don't follow the Everyday Paleo blog, you should). We also have the Paleo Diet Cookbook, but I've found we don't refer to it as often as the Primal one.

If you miss breaded meats or vegetables, try using almond flour. Trader Joe's is by far the least expensive source I've found for it. Lately I've been doing breaded zucchini and summer squash--chop the veggies, heat some butter in a pan, and toss the veggies in with some almond flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder (I use about 1/3 cup flour per vegetable; just put in as much or as little seasoning as you like, I never measure). Toss it around to evenly coat it. Cook it about halfway, then turn up the burner a few degrees to brown the coating a bit.

Gazpacho is a good way to use up summer veggies--due to the acid, the veggies will keep a bit longer as gazpacho than they would just cut up and sitting in the fridge. In a food processor, grate a cucumber, a bell pepper (any color, I usually do orange or yellow for color variety), and a sweet onion. Put it in a bowl and throw in a few chopped tomatoes (or a can of diced tomatoes), some minced garlic, chopped fresh cilantro, salt and pepper. Put in enough tomato juice to make it soupy (I've used V8 in a pinch) then add a splash of white vinegar, a splash of olive oil, and a squirt of lime juice. Stir it all up and stick it in the fridge. It'll keep about a week, and tastes best on the 3rd day. :)

I make a mango salsa/salad thing that makes Boyfriend practically bounce out of his chair with happiness. It's a mango, half a red bell pepper, and an avocado, diced and mixed together with a handful of chopped cilantro and a squirt of lime juice. It makes a good accompaniment for chicken or pork, but lots of times we just eat it with a spoon for a snack.

When it comes to meat, season the crap out of it with all sorts of herbs and spices and you won't miss creamy sauces and breaded fry batter. Lea & Perrins brand Worcestershire sauce is Paleo friendly and is just about the only marinade I use for beef. Got an eye of round in the crockpot right now with some L&P, water, and a whole bunch of ground mustard and paprika. For chicken, I like to do fruit-juice marinades.

I'll be honest, we really don't do much in the way of recipes in the summer. It's easier in the winter, what with soups and stews being the go-to meal, but in the summer it's usually just meat with veggies, and we play around with combinations and seasonings.

Feel free to PM me, and check my blog now and then--I do some food posts on occasion.

Hate to show my ignorance ................ but just what IS the Paleo diet please?

It's a diet that resembles the types of foods and carb-to-protein ratio that humans evolved with--the types of things we can digest and metabolize most efficiently. It excludes a lot of things that came about with the invention of agriculture which are a regular part of a modern diet. The idea is that agriculture has only been around for about 10,000 years, but humans have been around for millions--so we haven't had enough time in an evolutionary sense to really optimize the use of those foods.

In a nutshell, that means no grain, no dairy, no added sugars, and no legumes. There are other guidelines, but that's the basic idea. There's also a huge emphasis on natural and organic foods--grass-raised meat, for example, is vastly preferred over grain-raised feedlot meat. Not everyone follows it strictly--even just following it 85% will provide health benefits. In our house, we follow it about 90%-95% (we will allow the occasional bit of cheese and we cook with butter pretty frequently, and Boyfriend is a long-distance runner so he can afford a bit of wiggle room in the sugar department).

It's not for everyone, and it can be difficult to follow at times, but I can't argue with the fact that when I started it, I lost ten pounds in just a couple weeks even though I was eating as much as I felt like. It kind of redefines what conventional wisdom has been telling us about food, what we need, how much we need, and how it affects us.